MMOexp: The normal debate about difficulty
Elden Ring's Minimal User Interface and HUD Elements have triggered Maximum Debate Discussions
If you've been online in Elden Ring Runes the past week, you've probably witnessed a variety of heated discussions taking place over Elden Ring. The normal debate about difficulty and accessibility is a major topic about the game, however the latest point of contention was Elden Ring's user interface. The menus and elements on screen which provide information on your health pool as well as rune count.
Like Souls, it's akin to the predecessors. Elden Ring has some sparse UI design. The HUD displays the most important information, including your stamina bar as well as equipped items, and that's all there is. The user interface isn't very easy to grasp at first, particularly considering the variety of choices the game offers without having to take each one of them down. Things like carrying around your bag or looking at the map can be an issue to perform while playing The Lands Between or in a combat situation, but that's par with the norm for an FromSoftware game. However, this hasn't stopped people from speculating about the possibility of a more "mainstream" version of Elden Ring instead.
Gamboozino shared a photo-shopped, heavily edited image on March 5 showing the Ubisoft Elden Ring might look like. It's easy to imagine how cluttered the screen appears filled with buttons for "Tarnished Sense" (lol) and annoying notifications on the next boss to take down. It may be an exaggeration of Ubisoft's design, but the picture is created in the mind of the player, and is completely in contradiction to Elden Ring's style.
The image jumped from Reddit and then Twitter and was later popularized, and is an early proponent for the ongoing debate over user interfaces. Since then, a variety of people--apparently including the developers of Guerrilla Games, Nixxes Software and Ubisoft -- have weighed into the debate with a variety of hot reactions. A lot of people have said that Elden Ring's user interface (and in turn the user experience) is a mess, especially because it doesn't do a good job of explaining what specific icons mean, if you don't study the descriptions of the equipment first or what they mean to buy Elden Ring Items the game you play.
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